OVER a dozen residents at a care home in Wrexham have died amid a Covid outbreak.

A total of 13 residents of Hillbury Care Home have died after contracting the virus, leaving its staff "heartbroken".

Cindy Clutton, care home manager, says she and the rest of her dedicated team at Hillbury Care Home, are “utterly devastated” by the tragic toll as the new highly infectious mutant strain of the virus sweeps through Wrexham.

She said her staff had battled valiantly to keep the virus at bay at Hillbury since early March.

Over the summer they had managed to contain an outbreak without any loss of life when five people caught the illness.

But after working so hard, a recent outbreak of coronavirus has swept through the care home.

Ms Clutton said: "I have been working in social care since I was 16 - this is my life. I will never ever get over this. I am totally heartbroken.

“The staff are also utterly devastated. Unlike a hospital where people are generally in and out in a few weeks or less, you build a really close bond with your residents.

“They are like members of your extended family and we are privileged to provide care for them in their twilight years.

“It doesn’t make it any easier that those who passed away had underlying health problems. When you have people as frail as this, the odds are against them.

“We did not lose anybody until December 18 and then we had the worst Christmas ever when we were facing unprecedented pressures. Christmas will never the same again."

Wrexham now has five of the 10 highest localised case rates in Wales, the highest being 1,468 cases per 100,000 in Gwersyllt West and Summerhill.

Health officials say the new variant now accounts for 70 per cent of the cases in North Wales.

The Pendine care organisation, which owns Hillbury Care Home, has put an “enormous amount of effort and resources” into keeping residents and staff safe.

They had been way ahead of the curve in locking down in early March, well before the official Government advice to do so.

As well as spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on extra PPE, they had built handwashing and temperature checking stations to screen staff.

Their in-house training arm, the Pendine Academy of Social Care, had devised and run specialist infection control courses, either socially distanced in person or online.

The home has paid tribute to the “fantastic support” they had received from Wrexham County Borough Council, the team of District Nurses and local GPs.

Their priority now was providing care for the remaining 40 residents at Hillbury and keeping them safe and well.

With Covid-19 “rampant” in Wrexham, Mis Clutton pleaded with the public to adhere to the well-known safety protocols of social distancing, wearing masks and regular handwashing to suppress the virus.

She said: “I have a brilliant team who have been heroic in fighting this deadly virus and we are determined to return Hillbury to what it has always been – a place where people can come together as a community to enjoy life.

“The support of the families has been deeply touching and overwhelming. They are constantly in our thoughts because they are part of the extended Hillbury family. We also mourn their loss.

“Anybody who thinks this virus is not a real and deadly threat should swap places with me and see how quickly and aggressively it can spread through a care home or a community like Wrexham.

“The fact that the virus spread so rapidly suggests it is this dreadful new strain of the disease which is so much more transmissible. We do know however that it reached Wrexham a while back and is now entrenched in the community.

“Unfortunately, the new Covid strain was not flagged up soon enough by the Government who allowed people to mix over Christmas, potentially turbo-charging the spread.

“It is a cruel and indiscriminate disease and I appeal to everybody living in Wrexham to adhere to the official advice in terms of social distancing, wearing masks and not mixing households so we can try and suppress the virus until we can roll out the vaccine."

Lawrence Isted, on behalf of the Incident Management Team at Wrexham Council, who is currently dealing with the outbreak at Hillbury Care Home, said: “We have met regularly since the outbreak was first confirmed to bring it under control and we will continue to offer our support throughout this difficult period.

"We are confident every precaution has been taken to prevent further spread of infection within the home and the safety of residents and staff remains everyone's number one priority.”